gefma Tag Bayern 2023 - successful ESG transformation platform for the facility management industry

In his presentation "100 Years of BayWa - 100 Years of Sustainability", Andreas Helber, CFO of BayWa AG, emphasized that BayWa AG, as an internationally active company with an agricultural division that accounts for almost 60% of its business activities, is sustainable quasi per se and experiences climate change first-hand, so to speak. That's why the sustainability strategy is a priority, he said. "But it has to become a profitable sustainability," Andreas Helber emphasized, which is why BayWa AG has introduced an internal carbon pricing model.

The woman with the "mission to make our working world more open and more human" focused on the "S for Social" in ESG in her keynote address for gefma Tag Bayern 2023. Anne Tischer, Managing Director of Karma She Said and Chairwoman of Frauen !n Führung e. V., outlined a world in flux. Whether societal, demographic, climatic, technological or related to the crises in the world, the transformation pressure on companies is constantly increasing, she said. Based on numerous studies, she showed that a positive appreciative corporate culture, equality, continuing education and diversity are not only the top S-criteria of today's job seekers, but above all drivers of success: "The likelihood of a company's economic success increases by 25% and 36% when there is diversity by gender and ethnicity, respectively, according to a McKinsey study," she said. With this in mind, Anne Tischer gave industry representatives four recommendations: 

• Promote diversity of perspectives in the workforce and teams. 
• Challenge existing gender stereotypes and clichés. 
• Try out and learn new things 
• Develop a new understanding of leadership.

Their message was obviously well received, because at the conclusion of the event, the previously all-male gefma Lounge Leitung Bayern was able to welcome female reinforcements in the form of Julia Werner, Managing Director of Werner Companies GmbH.

In her contribution, Giulia Peretti, Head of Sustainability, outlined the decarbonization of the company's own real estate portfolio as part of the Real I.S. ESG strategy with the aim of achieving climate neutrality or conformity with the 1.5° decarbonization path. Based on a status quo analysis, measures were developed to improve sustainability performance, such as mobility concepts, green leases, smart meters. A particularly impressive project example for the audience: 40% heat savings and 60% electricity savings through smart data technology at an office building completed in 2021. Giulia Peretti considers close and good cooperation between asset, property and facility managers to be particularly important for a successful ESG transformation. Real I. S. would like to see proactive and proactive action from the on-site staff regarding energy saving measures and the energy improvement of the properties. When asked how investors were convinced of the company's own ESG strategy, the native Italian replied that, firstly, many of the ESG measures had to be implemented anyway due to the regulatory framework; moreover, numerous studies had confirmed that the value added increases with sustainable real estate (up to 6% higher rents); and, last but not least, the necessary investments were implemented with a time lag on the individual properties.

Ralf Pilger, Managing Director of WISAG Facility Management Holding GmbH & Co. KG, took his audience on a journey from classic energy management to Paris-compliant real estate. His credo: "The foundation for sustainable real estate is data." In this context, he raised the question of whether the FM sector might also need more data analysts. As a service provider, one has the great opportunity to form benchmarks. The challenge here is to prepare the data in a target-oriented manner. Wisag uses the wenode ecosystem to derive necessary measures in the areas of meter management, energy monitoring and climate impact on the basis of the operating data. Overall, support is needed in the general jungle of laws and guidelines.

In the discussion that followed, Günter Lammering, Head of Facility Management at alstria office REIT-AG, put it in a nutshell: "The industry lacks a uniform data model that supports the API interface-supported exchange of numerical data." Günter Lammering outlined how his company solves this challenge in his presentation "Changes in real estate strategy over the last ten years and current ESG projects in facility management". As a listed company, alstria has already been publishing a sustainability report since 2010. The strategy of the REIT-AG is to keep real estate in the portfolio for longer and to refurbish it, in some cases extensively. Data was needed for this. After implementing an in-house FM department, processes were established step by step for both new buildings and existing properties. In this way, the entire asset portfolio was recorded, structured and continuously monitored in collaboration with an external FM consultant who also acts as an auditor. Subsequently, a structured energy and meter management was implemented, which will finally be transferred to an energy management platform (Power-BI), thus enabling the evaluation of the CRREM decarbonization path per property.

Dennis Sawin, co-founder and managing director of Clearago GmbH, and his partner Ritesh Mantavi have revolutionized the waste disposal industry, which has been described as a "digital laggard," with the help of digitization and new technologies. In his presentation, he outlined the five steps from status quo to sustainable waste management. The goal of the Berlin-based company, founded in 2017, was not only to establish transparent and efficient processes to save costs, but also to implement active controlling to enable optimization measures towards zero waste and adherence to ESG and compliance. Of particular interest to the audience were the practical examples from different sectors, such as construction and the hotel industry. Sources of optimization here were, for example, filling levels of containers, collection rhythms, waste separation or also the optimization of service providers. Ongoing pilot projects in the real estate sector currently involve benchmarking between different hospital locations or portfolio-wide ESG reporting with regard to waste management.

With his company, Recogizer GmbH, for which he is Head of Sales, Manuel Gerlach also highlights optimization potential in building operation by means of digitalization and AI. Based on the fact that 97% of the building stock is not efficient enough to achieve the defined climate targets, he was able to show with the help of practical examples in office buildings that 30% CO2 reduction can be achieved in buildings with building automation and a 15% CO2 reduction in buildings without building automation. The predictive cloud solution creates cost reductions of 20%, which can then be used again to invest in existing buildings. Even without capex investment, up to 30% energy and CO2 can be saved. Important for the panelists was the info that the costs are fully apportionable.

Klaus Forster, lawyer and associate partner at Rödl & Partner, and Wolfgang Inderwies, freelance consultant with a focus on FM, jointly chair the nationwide gefma working group "Tendering and Awarding in FM". They reported on "gefma industry standards for operating in the mirror of sustainability: model contract (gefma 510) and performance specification (gefma 520)". They said that the model contract is one of the most commonly used contract templates in FM tenders. For this purpose, parts from gefma 510 are used in many tenders. The reliability of the gefma documents is also demonstrated by the fact that there have been no disputes over formulations from these templates in recent years. Key innovations in the model contract, which will be updated in 2023, and the associated guidelines include the inclusion of ESG in the subject matter of the contract, ESG-compliant reporting, and the inclusion of quality assurance.

Anette Weller, Member of the Management Board (CSO) of Gegenbauer Holding, reported on "ESG as a driver of cultural change for operational FM companies." She pointed out that the credibility of a corporate culture is reflected in its daily actions, i.e., whether I consciously decide to include social factors in an FM tender or leave them out. Anette Weller was convinced that the effect of an open corporate culture characterized by sustainability is much stronger when the company management leads the way from the top. An enormous transfer of knowledge is therefore needed, starting with regulatory issues and continuing with customers, certifications and much more. She reported on many valuable workshops in which she and a team communicated these topics to all employees in a comprehensible and tangible way. In the process, a concept was implemented that establishes a culture of discussion and communication that leads to greater understanding of what makes each other tick. If there are fewer conflicts as a result, the effort is easily amortized. FM and corporate culture inspire each other every day, according to their experience. In this sense, such a gefma day is elementarily important to enable and deepen knowledge and exchange.